by David Hewson
As she watched one screen went blank except for a blue no-signal message. Then the next. Then, in a rush, the rest.
Photographs. Dozens. On the walls. On the floors.
Monochrome faces Lund didn’t know. A Canon SLR camera with a telephoto lens. Documents on ship movements. What seemed to be a graphic description of the Zeeland security network, covering multiple locations. Industrial units, offices. Private premises too.
‘I don’t get it,’ Juncker said, shining his beam on the camera. ‘Why would someone hole up here, kill three sailors, all to take a pop at a politician?’
Lund was barely listening. On a desk in the corner she’d found a set of fresh colour prints, straight out of the inkjet there. Some were aerial shots off the web. Lawns and trees. A satellite view of what looked like a grand mansion.
An ordinary-looking man next to a shiny Range Rover. About forty, in a suit. He seemed deeply miserable.
‘That’s Robert Zeuthen,’ Juncker said. ‘The Zeeland bloke.’
She flipped over the print, looked at the next one. Zeuthen going to his car, two small shapes inside. There was a date stamp on the print. Four thirty that very afternoon.
‘I don’t get it . . .’
‘So you said, Asbjørn.’
He went quiet after that.
Lund looked at the printer. A red light was flashing. Out of paper, mid-job. She picked some sheets off the desk and fed them into the tray.
The thing rattled and whirred. Then started printing again.
Out they came. Shot after shot.
Every one of them was a girl in blue jeans and denim jacket. Blonde hair. Not smiling much except when she saw her father and seemed to think he needed that.
Then the last one. Up close. This wasn’t from a long lens. She was there, laughing for whoever held the camera. A kitten in her arms.
‘This isn’t about Hartmann at all,’ Lund said, and got back on the phone.
Zeuthen slewed the big car on the gravel, left the door open as he ran into the house. The front door was open. Maja was there shivering in her green parka.
Wide-eyed, scared, hurt, she said, ‘The police called. They said we had to stay inside. They were sending—’
‘Where are the kids?’
‘Carl’s upstairs. Emilie . . .’
Her face said it all.
Zeuthen ran inside, got a torch, walked out into the grounds, flashing the beam around.
She came and joined him.
‘How long?’ he asked.
‘She said she was going to feed the hedgehog. You’d told her it was all right.’
‘How long?’ he repeated.
‘Forty minutes. An hour.’
Drekar was surrounded by a sprawling estate of ornate gardens, ponds, a lake, a tennis court, a croquet lawn, a picnic area. Then woods, stretching back to the coast.
A high security fence ran round everything, part of the extended surveillance network connected to the Zeeland offices by the docks.
A thought.
He marched back into the entrance hall, stared at the dead screens on the wall.
Then out to the drive. One of the garden staff was nearby, wondering what was going on. Zeuthen grabbed him, asked about the hole in the fence, near the brook. Which brook? There were several.
The man had no good answers. Zeuthen was getting desperate. A nine-year-old girl, lost in the vast gardens and forest around her home. It was like a fairy tale gone bad. Except most fairy tales went that way, for a while at least.
Blue lights down the long drive. Sirens. The two of them watched a car brake hard to stop by his Range Rover. There were more behind.
Two people got out. A young, tall skinny man with a scared face and an anxious demeanour. And a woman, plain, long dark hair tied back behind her head. Sad, shining eyes that seemed to be looking everywhere as she walked towards them.
She pulled out an ID card. A white car with Politi on the side swung to a halt nearby, then another. He could hear the relentless slash of an unseen helicopter, its blades tearing the night to pieces.
‘Police. Sarah Lund,’ she said. ‘Where’s your daughter?’
Robert Zeuthen turned towards the dense forest, trying to find the words.
That was where she always went of late, for no good reason. He should have noticed.
Through the dark wood where the dead trees gave no shelter Lund walked on and on. She’d set a sweeping path of officers to spread out into the dense, dark areas round the mansion. Left Juncker there to liaise with the rest of the crews arriving from the Politigården. The Zeuthens were no ordinary family. A threat to them was a challenge to the state itself.
She’d tried to tell Robert Zeuthen what to do. It was no use. The man was beyond her, ranting and running, dashing his torch beam everywhere.
Lund followed, dragged Zeuthen out of a low ditch he called the brook when he stumbled into it. Trying to talk. To reason. To see.
After a while they reached a tall, heavy fence. Open rough ground on the far side. There was a hole cut at the base, big enough for a child to crawl through.
He jerked at the wire, made the gap bigger.
‘What is this, Robert?’ she asked. ‘You need to tell me.’
‘She did whatever she wanted.’
‘I need to know!’
It came out then. How someone had seen her here feeding a cat. How the surveillance system had gone down, not that it would have caught a hole like this in the first place.
Then he was on his hands and knees, scrambling through the gap, muddy suit, filthy smart office shoes, grubby hands.
Lund followed. Somewhere behind she could hear a familiar deep voice calling on her to stop, to wait.
Beyond the wire lay a saucer in the long grass next to a carton of milk.
She didn’t bother trying to talk to Zeuthen any more. The bare trees, the cold dark night. The empty, indifferent countryside. None of this was new.
After a while he stopped, let out a shriek of shock and pain. Catching up she saw what was in his hands: a single pink wellington boot, the kind a young girl would wear.
‘Please,’ Lund said. ‘Put it down. Don’t touch anything.’
She didn’t need to ask the obvious question: was this Emilie’s?
More lights now. Brix still barking at her to stop, to wait.
Watching Zeuthen blunder on she wondered how often she’d heard that. How many times to come.
‘You have to let us do this,’ Lund said.
It’s our job, she thought. It’s all we do.
The helicopter was close above. She glanced back. A long line of officers, torches out, coming towards them. A tall figure that could only be Brix in front, bellowing.
Then she bumped into something, was confused for a moment.
It was Zeuthen. He’d stopped in front of a low thorn bush, torch on the naked branches. A child’s rucksack, ponies patterned on the side, sat in the branches. He reached for it.
Enough. She ordered him to get back, elbowed him out of the way when he didn’t, pulled on a pair of latex gloves, reached out and extracted the thing from the branches.
That took a while. It had been thrown there, deliberately. By the time she got it out Brix was with them.
‘Do you have any idea where the girl is?’ he asked.
Zeuthen couldn’t talk. His wife turned up breathless, struggling to speak.
Then Juncker. He said they’d found tyre tracks down a rough lane a short way across the field.
‘And this . . .’ He held out an evidence bag, shone his torch on the contents. A small silver bracelet. ‘It’s got her name on it.’
Maja Zeuthen said nothing. Her husband could only stare at the tiny object in the young cop’s hands.
A dog barked.
Brix went to the Zeuthens.
‘I’ve got the army joining the search teams. We’ve got a helicopter in the area.’
‘I can hear it,’ Lund muttered, struggling with the
zip on the bag.
‘We’re doing everything we can . . .’
The woman started sobbing. Zeuthen reached out for her. She pulled away.
Finally Lund got the bag open. Looked inside. Nothing but a cheap smartphone. Gingerly she took it out.
The screen came alive straight away. It was set up for a video call she guessed. All she could see was what looked like a van interior: pale plain walls. Then a figure came in from the left and she knew he was looking at her. Black hood. Slits for eyes.
‘I want to speak to whoever’s in charge of the investigation,’ he said in a cultured, measured voice.
They crowded round, looking, listening.
‘Who is this?’ Lund asked.
‘Your name and rank, please.’
‘Sarah Lund. Vicekriminalkommisær.’
‘The girl’s OK.’
‘I want to see her.’
The screen went blank. He’d put the phone to his ear.
‘I regret that’s not possible.’
‘What do you want?’
‘Nothing unreasonable. I know these are tough times. But debts are debts. I’d like to collect what I’m owed.’
‘A debt?’ Maja Zeuthen shrieked. ‘What the hell’s he talking about?’
The voice laughed then.
‘I hear we have an audience. Good. Let’s all be friends. The question you need to answer’s a simple one. How much is a girl’s life worth? What exactly will you give to get her back?’
‘Tell us what you want,’ Lund repeated.
A long pause. Then, ‘I just said, didn’t I? Are you listening? I’ll call tomorrow afternoon. On this number. I talk to you and you only, Lund. I look forward to your offer.’
‘Yes, yes,’ she said quickly. ‘It’s important you let me speak to Emilie. We need—’
One click. That was all. She looked at the phone. He was gone.
A bitter wind was winding through the dead trees, scattering its chill breath across the bare land.
Maja Zeuthen, eyes bright with fear and fury, standing, shaking, tipped back her long blonde hair, began to howl.
Thursday 10th November
Morning in the red-brick castle called Drekar. Robert Zeuthen woke on the sofa, still in his filthy suit and shoes.
For a long minute he was convinced this was a dream. A stupid, unbelievable nightmare. Then he looked round. At the painting she hated. The marks of a million muddy boots on the carpet, now being quietly cleaned by one of the staff. Knew this was real.
Knew too that he was on his own. Maja was gone, back to Carsten Lassen’s little flat, a different life with a different man.
He got up, went to Emilie’s room for no good reason. Looked at the empty bed. Picked up the doll she loved. Gazed at the animal posters on the wall. Stood by the window. Shook for a while. Cried looking out at the lawns covered in tyre tracks. Wiped his eyes on his grubby sleeve.
Reinhardt stood at the foot of the stairs, presentable as always in a black suit, dark tie, white shirt. He briefed Zeuthen on what the police had told him. It wasn’t much.
‘Does Maja know all this?’ Zeuthen asked.
‘She’s been calling them all night I gather.’
‘We need to talk to security and finance about the ransom. Fix a meeting.’
‘That’s happening already, Robert. PET are involved. We have to follow their lead.’ He hesitated, then added, ‘Whenever we’ve had cases like this in the past Kornerup handled them. He’s very . . . adept.’
Zeuthen didn’t understand.
‘What do you mean . . . cases like this?’
‘There was an incident in Somalia. Not long before your father died. Kornerup kept it out of the papers.’ A wry expression on Reinhardt’s long, bloodless face. ‘He always knew how to manipulate them I suppose. If we could—’
‘I fired Kornerup. We deal with this ourselves. The men that were killed . . .’
‘Latvian. Our people are offering their families support.’
Zeuthen was looking at his clothes. Realizing he needed to change. To do something.
‘If I’d known about the cat this would all have been different . . .’
Reinhardt put a supportive hand to his shoulder.
‘Let’s just get Emilie home, Robert. That’s what matters now.’
Morning in the white stone fortress that was the Politigården. Lund had snatched a couple of hours sleep in a bunk then found time to go home briefly, get some fresh clothes. Prepare for the long day ahead.
The cheap smartphone stayed with her all the time. In the shower. When she pulled on the case clothes from before: a pair of jeans, heavy boots, a sweatshirt and one of the patterned wool jumpers she’d started to buy a lifetime ago when she took a young Mark to the Faroe Islands on holiday, to try to make amends for the divorce.
That worked.
Plugged into a charger, the handset sat on the desk in homicide while she watched Borch and Juncker going through photos from the Medea, the kidnapper’s, the police’s own. Brix stood over them silent, brooding. Dissatisfied.
The call had been made through the Internet and was untraceable. A stolen white van had been recovered near the docks. Emilie’s other pink wellington boot was in there and her prints, no one else’s. There was no new significant evidence from the ship. Every sign the kidnapping was the work of a lone operator who had prepared the abduction thoroughly in advance.
Around eleven the previous night she’d left Robert and Maja Zeuthen bickering and snarling at each other. Lund doubted either had slept. When she looked at the phone log she knew it. Constant calls, to Brix, to his superior Ruth Hedeby. To the Ministry of Justice and the Prime Minister’s office too. Hartmann had issued a statement of sympathy along with a declaration of gratitude to Zeuthen for supporting the government. Then turned his terriers on the police demanding a quick solution.
As if we’d be looking for a slow one, Lund thought as Hedeby passed on the news.
When Nanna Birk Larsen went missing her parents, an ordinary working-class couple from Vesterbro, had no one to turn to. The Zeuthens seemed spoiled for choice. Not that it helped.
One slim piece of evidence: tyre tracks near the abandoned van suggested the kidnapper had moved Emilie into a larger vehicle.
‘He could be three hundred kilometres away by now,’ Juncker grumbled.
‘It’s a kidnapping, Asbjørn,’ Lund said patiently. ‘He’s asking for money. Even if the girl’s dead he’ll still want to collect.’
Brix asked, ‘What do we know about the van he left?’
‘It belongs to a bunch of Serbian crooks,’ Lund said. ‘They run a prostitution ring. We pulled in the ones we could find. And some of their girls.’
He looked interested.
‘It’s not them,’ she added. ‘There’s no trace of her anywhere near their brothel. They say the van was stolen three nights ago. They never reported it of course but . . . they wouldn’t.’
They had four Serbs in custody and a line of trafficked women being steadily interviewed a few doors down. Lund had spent half an hour with the men already.
‘The pimp kept a set of keys in the van,’ she said. ‘Places he used to house women when he brought them into the country. We’re going through them.’
She’d been reading some background material on the Zeuthens. Divorce about to come through. Plenty of bitterness between the two of them. They had fifty-fifty custody of the children. She was living with a doctor from the university hospital, Carsten Lassen. No one else involved in the break-up. The cause seemed to lie principally with Robert Zeuthen’s workload at Zeeland.
‘No love lost between Zeuthen and his wife, is there?’ she noted. ‘Did you hear what she was screaming at him when we left?’
If you’d let her come home with me like I asked.
‘People blame each other sometimes,’ Borch said. ‘It’s a way of not blaming yourself. Fools no one.’
Lund closed her eyes for a second, wishing t
hey could see this the way she did.
‘It was an organized kidnapping. If he hadn’t taken Emilie last night . . .’
Brix gave her a caustic glance.
‘You should have checked out that ship when you first saw it.’
‘That was my decision too,’ Borch lied.
She wasn’t listening. Just staring at the school photograph of Emilie Zeuthen on the desk, the one that seemed to be everywhere now – in the papers, on TV. Blonde-haired, smiling, staring straight at the camera with an intelligent, studied candour. Next to the picture were forensic shots of the men on the boat. Half-naked, like the victim found in pieces at the dock.
‘Why did he torture these men?’ she asked. ‘What did he want from them?’
No one answered.
Borch threw some more photos on the table. Shots of a kitten. Emilie holding the creature in her arms, smiling for the camera.
‘He must have groomed her well. Sarah . . .’
Lund barely heard. The tortured men bothered her.
‘Sarah! You’ve got to keep that phone charged and with you all the time. We don’t know when he’ll call. Just agree with whatever he says. Keep him talking. We can trace—’
‘We already know he’s using the Internet,’ she pointed out. ‘He was smart enough to take down the entire Zeeland security network. Do you think he’s going to give himself away with a phone call?’
‘Better hope so,’ Juncker grumbled. ‘We’ve got bugger all otherwise.’
Sometimes she wanted to scream.
‘Think about what he said. He never used the word ransom. He wanted an offer. A debt paid. What’s he talking about? Who do Zeeland owe money?’
Borch seemed to take the point.
‘They’ve got a turnover of three hundred billion kroner. Maybe they’re arguing the toss over a heating bill somewhere. How are we supposed to—?’
‘If it’s just about money why doesn’t he say how much he wants?’
‘Ask him when he calls,’ Brix suggested. ‘Here . . .’
He passed over an email from Reinhardt at Zeeland.
‘You wanted to know what the crew had been up to. According to the company the only one who’d been ashore in the last week was the mate. He asked for permission to leave because he’d been called as a witness in a court case. These places you’re checking—’
